


Parthenogenetic

by Inaudible (HankTalking)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Identity Issues, Sibling Bonding, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26600104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HankTalking/pseuds/Inaudible
Summary: The tank is stored on Lazarus station instead of Minuteman. Shepard stumbles, fumbles, bumbles into a clone pod. Shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Female Shepard Clone (Mass Effect), Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Kudos: 16





	1. Larva

“Well, shit.” I stare through the patch cleared of condensation, an ulnar-border sized window into the depths of madness. “That’s certainly a me in there.”

I step back and do a well-practiced This Is A Goddamn Bitch Of An Unsatisfactory Situation as I contemplate life and the meaning of things and also what the hell I’m supposed to do now. The alarms are still blaring and there’s still mechs tearing the station apart, but now I’ve been hit not only with the fact that I’ve recently come back from the dead, but also that I’m probably going to have to grapple with identity or personhood or some shit like that.

My comm crackles. “Shepard, I need you to get to that elevator ten minutes ago, I have hostiles closing in on my location.”

“Mm,” I note absently. “Lawson, right? Look, I’m going to have to take rain check on that one.” I set down my side arm on the nearest operating table and crack my neck. “I just found your other Shepard.”

There’s a burst of silence on the end of the line and, if I have this bitch pegged right, she’s doing the quickest mental calculation on how to get me to not look any deeper Cerberus’s shit. (Also, how to make me not mutiny her ass the second I meet her) “That’s for medical purposes. One of the necessary components to bring you back.”

“You’re right! Even helpfully says so: Organ Redundancy and In-Lab Neural Trials. Bit of a rude thing to write on someone’s chart.” I swipe past the front facing datapad to get at the controls. “But—now I don’t know if you know this Lawson—but this whole research station is on the fritz. Someone should probably get her out of there before she gets ejected into the vacuum of space. I’ve been there, it’s not fun.”

“Shepard, do _not_ open that tank-” I mute her. With a flex of my fingers, I pull apart the glass door.

Blue-green fluid, only half drained before I broke the seal, sloshes onto the floor in a wave of rancid murk. It smells like a un-emptied kitchen trash bag: days of leftover food piled high until their individual rotting stenches morph into a singular glorious aroma that leaks into the whole apartment.

The women inside gets to do the same song and dance I want through not a half-hour before. She lurches forward with a gasp, twisting under unfamiliar light, breathing with lungs that have never known air. It’s only thanks to my now sludge-footed position directly in front of her that I’m able to catch her before he hits the floor.

“Whoa there hot stuff,” I tell her as she flounders about, sticky and slippery all at once. “I gotcha, it’s alright.”

Like a hagfish, she takes one moment to realize she’s being held and absconds with a graceless _splurp_. She careens into an operating table, metal stools screaming their protest, and scrabbles backwards until she’s well and fully cornered herself.

“Okay, no touchy. Sorry buddy.” I crouch down until we’re level. If the frosted tank was playing tricks on me, there’s no mistaking her face now. She still has nutrition fluid in her lashes, making the eyes beneath even more doe-like as she tries to put additional inches between her and me. “It’s okay, I’m here to help. Do you understand me?”

She just stares, chest heaving, covered in slime and naked as the day she was born. Which—I guess—she just was.

“Well. That’s not good.” I really hope she’s merely in shock, and I’m not going to have to manhandle her out of here just because nobody bothered to connect those speech pathways. “I know things are scary right now, and you want to know where you are and why you’re here, but to be honest, I don’t damn know myself. All I know is that we need to get out of here, and we’ll be safer together.”

I want to give her a better wakeup call than I received. Something more than just _get out of bed asshole, we are under attack_. Her hyperventilation is slowing, and I see something cross her face that I hope is language recognition.

A YMIR expires in the distance. I look away and back again. “I’m Shepard,” I say. She says nothing. “Alright, I’m going to need you to nod if you hear me.”

Then, slowly, her chin lowers to her chest and up again, and relief pools in my stomach.

“You know, I’ve never been happier to see a slow motion bobble-doll. Let’s get you up, buddy.”

This time she lets me help her to her feet, her freezing hand clasped in mine. I look around, hoping another set of armor might materialize as she shivers in the sterile air, but woe is me. Instead I rip the plastic sheets off the nearest gurney and drape it around her shoulders.

“Alright,” I announce. “Let’s boogey.”

* * *

There are far too many robots on this station for a woman who has not yet had her coffee.

I would be thankful that I’m not alone if it weren’t for the fact that my squad consists of a naked person I’m dragging around like an alien just sprung from a government facility. Whoa, that’s probably not a politically correct thing to think. I wonder if Salarians find E.T. offensive?

Thankfully, we’re not alone for long. When the gunfire stops, the officer stands from behind his cover and says, “good to see you up, Shepard. And-...Shepard?”

At the sight of the clone, he’s gone all bug-eyed; either he’s a good actor, or my return to life is somehow less of a secret than hers. To any but the top brass, apparently. “Yup, crazy who you run into these days. Small galaxy. Taylor, I presume?”

“Uh, yeah. Jacob Taylor. And you have a...person. With you.”

“I’m Buddy,” a small voice behind me says. If I wasn’t pin wheeling through five minutes cycles of being shot at, she shock might have made me jump out of my skin.

I spin on my heel. If she wasn’t the only living organic for fifty meters around, I could almost convince myself it wasn’t her. “Found your voice, huh?”

She nods. A name too apparently. I would correct her, except for the fact that she thinks I was calling her buddy because that’s her name and that is just too damn precious. She sticks out one hand between the folds of her sheet-robe and says, “I would like a gun now, please.”

Her face is perfectly neutral. Well, not neutral—there’s an almost pout to it, like she’s just remembered something. I shrug, and hand her the Predator.

“What is g-” Taylor starts as he watches the exchange, but I cut him off.

“You’re with Lawson, right? You tell her that if she even thinks about cleaning up lose ends,” I jerk my thumb back at Buddy, “She won’t live to regret it. Capisce?”

That actually snaps Taylor out of it, and he narrows his eyes, “ _I_ can’t tell her anything. I haven’t heard from Miranda in over an hour, and last time she said she was getting in contact with _you_.”

“...Oh. Right.” I slap my comm. “Hey Lawson.”

“ _Shepard_.” Oh, she’s very, very pissed. “If we want to make it off this station alive, we need to go _now_ , and I am not leaving the last two years of my life’s work.”

“Good to know I’m important to you.” I watch as Buddy aims down her sights. Her free hand still holds the insides of her makeshift cape. “I found your EXO, we’re heading to rendezvous.”

Another moment of deliberate silence. “Did you open the tank.”

I grin. “You bet your ass I did. And, word of advice, don’t make me wonder if you’re going to do anything about it.”

She pauses, but this one ends with a deep sigh. “Be here in ten minutes.”

We are, although is a brief moment after she kills Wilson where I’m so on edge that I’m about to return the favor, but she only gives Buddy a once over before lowering her gun. The standoff over, and we pack ourselves into the shuttle.

Out the window, Buddy watches Lazarus disintegrate in silent plumes of orange. Her only home, however brief it was. Lawson and Taylor have found her some Cerberus uniform, but it still feels like she’s bare on the seat next to me, vulnerable, exposed. I reach a hand to her shoulder and freeze, unsure.

She notices the twitch. She turns, her freckled face glowing with the radiation from outside, and looks at me with those big saucer eyes. Then, she leans into my shoulder, and goes back to watching the stars steam by.


	2. Pupa

“Can you blame me Shepard?” Kaidan asks, gaze cast low, like he can’t even look at me without suspicion wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “It’s been _two years_.”

“Well, sorry I didn’t write. I _have_ been dead ‘n all.”

The colony smells like old tires. Burning flesh mixes with burning rubber as survivors walk around in a daze at the corner of my vision. It’s a private as it’s going to get with only a crowd of zombies that couldn’t give a flying fadoodle about our relationship drama.

Kaidan doesn’t seem to appreciate that my rapier wit is still as sharp as ever as his frown tightens the corner of his nose. “This is serious Shepard. You come back with _Cerberus_ of all people and it…it makes me wonder what they _did_ to you. You could be brainwashed or a clone or—I don’t know, some sort of freak experiment for all I know.”

The grin that’s been plastered to my face since this whole shebang started only gets more uncomfortably tight. “A clone? Well then, we should use our secret password we came up with just in case one of us has been replaced by a doppelganger/clone/shapeshifter. Clear this right up.”

“Shepard,” he glares.

“We don’t have one? Well that not good. That should have been the _first_ thing we did.”

“Shepard. Enough.” He looks at me, only briefly, before snapping his eyes past to glare at the SR-2. It hurts that I don’t recognize his face anymore, don’t know what that is that flickers across it. Betrayal? Disgust? “Just go back to your ship, I have cleanup to do.”

So I’m standing here, on this still vaguely smoking planet, watching him walking away from me. Eventually, I call out a bitter, “you’re welcome,” but it’s for my benefit alone. By that point, he’s long gone.

I get through decontamination with a pang of hunger in my stomach and a lot of dust between my mesh. Buddy huddles close. It won’t keep us from being overheard, but I appreciate the sentiment. “I’m sorry about Alenko.”

“Well, he’s always been a stubborn bitch,” I admit with synthesized cheer. “If he didn’t give me shit, I suppose I would have been disappointed.”

She says nothing, but she knows me well enough by now. She knocks her shoulder plate against mine.

There’s no risk of anyone mistaking one for the other anymore. Off ship, she wears her helmet constantly—no one outside the Normandy, not Anderson, not even Kaidan knows exactly how many Citadel laws we’re breaking. She doesn’t sound like me either; at least that’s what everyone else has verified. To me she sounds like a whole ‘nother person, but humans are famously bad at recognizing their own vocal rhythms, so we ran things by Joker before risking a journey to the Citadel together. She’s taken on a flat, monotone way of speaking, which combined with her attempts at thick, crooked eyeliner and the bangs she’s let fall over one side of her face, paints a very clichéd picture. I’m not sure if she’s done it intentionally, or if it’s just in the nature of human adolescence that some attributes come in packages.

Not that she’s technically an adolescent, at least physically. You only have to watch her take down three-dozen Collectors in the space of a half hour to realize she’s as much of a terror as the rest of the squad. The sight…always irritates something in the back of my head. Lawson claims she was for spare parts, but Buddy knows how to talk, knows how to fight like hell on wheels. These are lies I’ve chosen not to press—but I haven’t forgotten them.

“I heard what happened with Kaidan,” Tali says the moment I swing by. “Are you alright Shepard?”

“Just peachy, actually. Though speaking of fruit, which grapevine did you hear _that_ through?” I shoot a look at Buddy, sitting on a railing with her feet over the core. Most certainly not allowed.

She does a good show of looking penitent, slinking a few inches away from me with her shoulders curled in—how ever the act is lost by the impish little smirk across her face.

I sigh. “I should make gossiping on this ship punishable by brig.”

“You wouldn’t have a crew within the week,” Tali laughs. She moves something on the reactor’s screen, and the room’s dull orange is supplanted by a chilled cyan. “But seriously Shepard, are you doing alright?”

“Eh. I’m repressing it.” I lean, elbows against the rail. “I mean, we technically haven’t been together for two years, so…” Shrug.

But for me it’s still yesterday, when I last kissed him, when we last snuck out to the core that was like this one but not. I shake it off. Tali looks at me with those glowing pricks of light like she can see right through my head. I hate that. Haven’t I had enough people looking through my head already?

I pretend not to see, and instead tell Buddy, “off the rail, sport. You fall in there, it’s going be the sort of mess that Daniels is going to have to scrape off with a spatula.”

“Aiming for a cool battle scar,” she claims, kicking her legs.

“What battle? With the floor of my ship?”

Neither of us have any scars anymore, wiped away by life and death, even ones that were supposed to mean something. The one on my right knee after falling waist deep in a trench on Akuze, my trigger finger during my first command. The sulfate burns when one Tenth Street boy thought I was getting too uppity. There aren’t even scars from being dead, which surprises me most of all because you’d think they’d have at least left a few marks after stitching me all back together, but all in all we’re left with very few distinguishing features.

Buddy has a mole up near her left eye. It might be a good way to tell us apart if the hair didn’t cover it up, since the only birthmark I have a splotch on my buttcheek in the shape of a thumbnail. (My first told me it reminded them of a moon, and it was such a stupidly sweet thing to say in a shabby little apartment and drowning in teenage hormones, that despite the awkward averageness of inexperienced sex, it’s still one of the most memorable nights of my life.)

Buddy gives up her aspirations of being reactor goop.

“ _Thank you_ ,” I say as her feet land on the catwalk. “Now, back to my mutinous crew.”

Tali tilts her head. “If you really don’t want to talk about it…”

“I’m fine.” I’m not. I miss him. I want to march back down to that planet and kick hiss ass for _being_ an ass. “We’re good.”

She stares at me scrutinizing, one arm propped under the other. Buddy looks at her sidelong, and then imitates her pose, fixing me with a thoughtful stare.

“Insubordinate, both of you.” Tali shrugs, Buddy laughs, and I push down a worry that I don’t have a name for yet. If they think it’s just Kaidan, that may buy me some time.

* * *

“Commander,” EDI informs the captain’s cabin evenly, “Dr. Solus says he a possible solution for your request.”

I set my cards down on the bed and stretch until my shoulder pops. “Alright, tell him I’ll be there in a moment.”

“If you leave you forfeit!” Buddy declares over her own hand.

“Says who?” I say, pulling on my hoodie-of-general-captain-purposes.

“Says me, Queen of Rummy!”

“We’re playing Crazy Eights.”

“…We were?” She peers at her cards.

Buddy spends most of her time (when not picking up bad habits from the crew) hanging out in my room playing various holo-games and occasionally cards. It’s a lot like an on-again-off-again sleep over, or I guess like having a little sister. The thought puts the memory of Earth under the palms of my hands. How many times had I wished I had family, any family to depend on back then?

People who have sibling say you wouldn’t wish for them if you did, but maybe I’m just an old fart because I find it nice to have Buddy shadow me everywhere. We drop through the elevators to the CIC, roll into the tech labs where she can immediately start picking weapon attachments off the counters and fiddling with.

“Whadda ya got for me, Doc?” I ask Mordin as he snaps around to meet me.

“In short, Krogran puberty.”

“Ah. Good. Two words I definitely wanted to hear in the same sentence and also next to each other.”

Buddy is unusually attentive as we start talking. Normally she cares little more than ‘go here, shoot this’ but when we drop down onto Tuchanka, she’s in her armor waiting at the airlock before I can even pull on my boots.

“I take it you want to come?” My eyebrow does all the talking I do not.

She sets her jaw firm. “We’re going to help Grunt.”

“Hah!” he says. “Tuchanka’s going to chew you up and spit out bones, runt.”

Buddy is not dissuaded. “You need to talk to the clan leader. I’m helping. Tankborns stick together.”

The _heh heh heh_ of Grunt’s chuckle always puts an unease in the pit of my stomach, but Buddy smiles when he pats her on the back so hard her helmet falls out of place. “Tankborns stick together! That’ll be a good chant to die singing.”

Of all the bad influences, Grunt is certainly the worst, but who am I to disrupt a budding friendship based on being mutual freaks of nature? I sigh, and step through decontamination.

The air outside is drier than I ever thought air could be; like it somehow has negative humidity, sucking out the moisture in my skin even through six filtration devices. I swear I can feel the faint tingle of radiation beyond my armor, even though I know no sentient being can perceive geigers besides Hanar.

The planet feels hungry. Maybe Grunt was right about it eating us whole.

* * *

Wrex greets me something that approximates a handshake and the impression that he’ll break every bone in my forearm. I give him the rundown, and when the rite becomes apparent, Buddy shoulders past and tells Uvenk, “I can. I’m his krantt.”

“You? Human female so soft that-”

She headbutts him. He goes down hard.

To Buddy’s credit, she stands her ground, momentarily puffing her chest like she’d seen Wrex do not a moment before, all confident dumb-human-doesn’t-know-when-to-quit-but-somehow-it-works-for-her. Uvenk grumbles, the Shaman laughs. As soon as we take one step out the door, she mutters a single agonized, “ ** _ow_**.” Grunt grins and slaps her on the shoulder.

“What did you kids just sign us up for?” I mummer.

The grates close behind us, upwards instead of sideways, shaking off sand in soft rivers as they seal us in. The keystone claws at the sky; maybe it’s not as tall as the spires on the Citadel, or hell even Earth, but right now it seems impossibly monstrous.

The gong it emanates as the mallet comes down shakes the marrow in my very bones and activates the anti-flashbang sensors in my helmet.

If the arena instills an oncoming rush of doom in me, then I’m the only one. Buddy flies over cover, whooping as she burns her amps to max, klixen splattering wherever she sticks her gun. Grunt’s right behind her throwing himself bodily into whatever he can get his hands on, and damn well doing his best to whatever he can’t. I watch them—watch her—and think _go here, shoot this_. The perfect soldier. The perfect grunt. _Organ Redundancy and In-Lab Neural Trials_.

Things could almost be said to be going well, when a Thresher Maw tears apart the arena and everyone in it.

The centuries-old pillar crumbles in its mouth, disintegrating, the once-sanctuary falling on top of us and the _smell_ comes over in waves and waves. That blue, psychedelic tongue lolling out as the Maw screams, and I freeze, looking up at ten stories of rippling organic tissue. It reeks of acid, of corrosion, of flesh burning and destruction and whatever was its last meal.

“Shepard!” Buddy is saying. “Shepard, move, move!”

I don’t know how long she was saying it, but I don’t listen in time. The ground shifts, and Tuchanka boils. There is no segment to a Thresher Maw—if you look at a loop of snakey flesh coming out of the ground there’s no real point of trying to define it as neck vs body vs tail. From the ground, our tiny little human perspective, it’s one long ouroboros, and the only thing you can fathom is that it is killing you.

The ground falls away. My back cracks against razored debris and I die for only the second time in one life.

* * *

“Shepard! Shepard, wake-y wake-y. _Please_ wake-y wake-y…”

I do wake-y wake-y and almost wish I hadn’t. Buddy always over applies the medi-gel, no matter how many times I tell her a little goes a long way, and now I’ve got that fuzzy overdose headache that comes on where your bones don’t feel like they fit into your joints right. All of this isn’t helped by the fact that Buddy has me by the shoulders and is giving me the shake-y shake-y.

“Mbudstop m good,” I gurgle. Medi-gel makes everything numb, including one’s tongue and tonsils.

“Shepard?” she asks, thankfully stopping.

“Mmmhmm.” I clear my throat and try again, since speaking without nerve endings requires the upmost concentration. “We really need to put you through a first aid course. One that sticks.”

She hugs me. It would be nice, if I could do more than just see her hug a rag doll my consciousness happens to be attached to.

My attention floats past her and a hovering Grunt to where a giant, ugly body is lying next to the Keystone. “You two take that thing down on your own?”

“HA! Yeah we did,” Grunt confirms. “Let’s go see what those Gatatog varren-humpers have to say NOW.”

He unfortunately gets his wish less than twelve seconds later when Uvenk thinks it’s a bright idea to charge us. We make it back to the Normandy with even more bruises, and a mess of matted blood on the back of my head.

My body is still numbed, torpid, like it belongs to someone else. So do…other things. Memories, terrors, fights that I was never in. I try to shower if off, superseding with the dried blood but failing with the foreboding, and flakes of red sputter off down the drain.

I stand in front of the mirror, facing backwards. I’ve been here a long time, unable to turn around, to look over my shoulder and check. I’m not delusional. I know that just because I don’t look doesn’t mean I can live in blissful ignorance—but at the same time, the muscles in my neck feel too tight, slept on wrong, incompliant.

But the pit in my stomach that I’ve been shoving every inconsistency into is just growing larger because of it. This the despair I can’t ignore any more. Vertebra by vertebra, I turn to look at my reflection’s back.


	3. Imago

“’Sup bitch,” I say leveling my pistol at Lawson’s chest. “Activate biotics, and I shoot you.”

Miranda, smart cookie that she is, doesn’t. She straightens her spine and drops her datapad on her desk. “Shepard, what is the meaning of this?” I have a feeling she wants to add a few more choice words in there as she stares daggers at me with those pretty blue eyes.

I slam my fist on the door control, giving us some privacy. “Just thought it was about time you and I had a chat, one on one. I’d talk to Jacob, weak link and all, but you knew that already, didn’t you? You haven’t told him anything.”

“If you have a problem, just say it.” Ah there it is. Balls of steel. No wonder the Illusive Man likes her and I don’t: she’s not going to give up anything for pretty words.

So I cut to the chase. “Where’s Shepard?’

To her credit, she betrays nothing, no hesitation, no twitch of the nose. Just crosses her arms and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I flip off the safety. “I’m not fucking around, Lawson. So I’m going to repeat the question _one_ more time: where’s Commander Shepard?”

She says nothing. Fine. I can talk.

“You know,” I say, drawing the pistol more comfortably on my other arm. “It just kept bothering me and bothering me: why give neural implants to a clone if she’s just for spare parts? Why teach her to fight, to shoot, to follow orders?” I run my thumb along the trigger. “Well, if it were me, I’d only go through all that trouble if I had a plan. A plan to make a new Shepard, one without all bits and bobs of the old one. None of the wounds, none of the scars.”

I flex my ungloved hand. I’d left it bare specifically for this, to remind me of the gash that used to crawl from middle finger to palm, all the way down to the wrist. Knife fight in a San Francisco alley. A friend dead who I can’t remember the name of anymore.

Except none of that happened to me. I was born in a pod with someone’s stolen soul.

I tilt my head. “I suppose if I were an organization with no sense of ethics, I would think to myself: why go through the trouble of brining someone back to life when a replacement could work just as well? So Lawson, tell me: where the _fuck_ is my sister?”

And, finally, Lawson reacts. A short, unhappy little laugh, “I always thought this was a mistake.” She looks out her window, the view of the galaxy feet away. “You’re wrong though: the first clone _was_ for spare parts. It wasn’t until we realized that Shepard Prime was irreparable that we began testing the control implants. My idea. I didn’t trust Shepard would be on our side.”

She looks down at the gun still pointed at her chest.

“But the combat sims didn’t work,” I say, thinking of Buddy with her perfect aim and her inability to sleep at night, her eyes wide whenever she thinks she’s been left alone.

“We found that Shepard Prime’s gyri couldn’t be laid over what we’d already put in,” Miranda says. “We needed a fresh mind, one that could be modded as we needed.”

Me. Shepard Numero Tres. I grit my teeth. “And Shepard? The real one?”

“To acquire the valley scans, we had to remove the brain from the-” She catches herself. “The rest of her that was beyond saving. The blueprint was lost when Lazarus self-destructed.”

A brain in a jar. Savior of the galaxy and Shepard spent her last years as a brain in a jar, operated on by the people she hated, disregarded as low priority as soon as things fell apart. I want to hate Lawson, shoot her right now for all the shit she put us through, but my heart isn’t in it. I’ll never think she isn’t an evil bastard, but I’m just so damn tired of hunting people who’ve wronged me. I drop my gun.

Half of me expects to be hit with a biotic wave as soon as I lower my guard, but Miranda just stares at me, that haughty judgment back in place. I blink back. “I think we should be honest with each other from now on.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I can’t promise that.”

“Too bad. You’re going to.”

She eyes me again. “Fine Shepard, have it your way.”

Is that who I am? The first is just a brain to be dissected and the second is for spare parts, but somehow I end up being Shepard?

I turn, disgust and grief clouding my vision as I punch the door open.

* * *

“Wow,” Buddy says as we lie on the bed, head to upside-down head, legs dangling over opposite edges. “That’s…wow.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

We stay like that quite a while, taking it all in. Or at least, that’s what I’m doing; I don’t know what this means for Buddy, if had been plaguing her as much as it did me or if it’s an injustice to find that your younger sibling usurped your rightful throne while you were sleeping. Most likely, knowing her, it may not have mattered either way.

She turns on her side. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Huh?” I prop up on an elbow.

“All that stuff…I guess I knew it too but I never suspected you weren’t her. How’d you figure it out.”

“Oh,” I say. “I uh…have a birthmark on my asscheek. Only I don’t because it’s not mine, it’s Shepard’s, and even genetic clones don’t share birthmarks. I could have look any time but…”

“Didn’t want to think too hard?” Her brow is up, disappearing into her shoddy bangs.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I feel that way all the time.”

“Well _that’s_ obvious.” She hits me with a pillow and giggles. I hit her back.

As we dissolve into stupid yelling and claims about being the better clone, the first step of Feeling Better shows itself. If this changes anything, it won’t be with Buddy. No, this is a thing I’m going to have to dissect myself.

* * *

“The Code say anything about clones,” I ask Samara as we meditate together in front of her giant sheet of stars.

“Meditation requires the mind to be quiet, Shepard,” she replies evenly. “But no, there is no mention. It is left to galactic and local law, which a Justicar will assist with as is needed.”

Ah. Yeah. That’s going to be a problem. Thankfully my stomach rumbles, and offers me a proper distraction. “Well, I’ll stop with the questions then. Gunna go grab some chow.”

“Stay away from the varren stew,” she recommends. “I believe it is the same pot from last month.”

I almost make it far enough be swayed against her advice when Miranda ambushes me. “Shepard. Do you have a moment?”

She wasn’t _lurking_ per say, women of Miranda’s stature do not _lurk_ , but she was in a very innocuous bend in the ship, almost conspicuous in its innocuity.

I fold my arms. “Many, as long as no one gets to dinner before I do.”

“It is a…personal matter.”

And boy to people love to tell me their personal problems. Is this going to involve going somewhere and doing something for her? Why, yes it is. Does this somehow involve daddy issues? Yes it does. I’d be getting bored of the old song and dance except that it does lead to a few interesting things.

“There’s one more thing that, well, it will be better if you know beforehand.” She hesitates. “Oriana is my genetic twin.”

It takes me several seconds to pull together _younger sister_ , to which I hiss, “you fucking hypocrite.”

She doesn’t flinch, which somehow makes me _more_ pissed.

“After threats you’ve made at Buddy, you seriously want me to go help with your stupid clone sister?” I jab a finger at her.

“I never threatened…Buddy.” She still says the name with an air of distaste, like this thing is particularly beneath her. I don’t know what her deal is when one of our squadmates is just named ‘grunt’.

“You were going to leave her behind,” I accuse. “Like you left Shepard.”

“ _You_ are Shepard,” she says. Her eyes dart briefly around, though there’s no one to hear but EDI. Outside of me, her, and Buddy, no one knows the truth. I’m still not sure if I want to keep it that way. “In every way that matters. Which is why I’m asking for your help, even as ungrateful as you are.”

I don’t want her as an enemy, especially with the Illusive Man getting more demanding by the day—if things go sour, better to let her fade quietly into the background than decide she’s better off at his side.

Plus, there’s some mopey teen in danger. Goodness knows I can’t resist helping a mopey teen.

“Fine. I’ll bail your perfect little ass out. But just _once_ , Lawson.”

* * *

Oriana doesn’t look like Miranda. If she hadn’t told me, I’d say they were at most cousins, not twins.

But as I watch them hug, distantly, on top of some non-smoldering crates, I can almost see it. It’s in the cheeks, or maybe the eyes, or—maybe—the way the hold each other. It’s hard not to see the cracks the Lawsons are hiding.

* * *

This negotiation will not succeed, but I’m going to try anyway.

“I don’t want you to come on the mission.”

“What?” Buddy would drop her Scrabble piece if it weren’t made of pixels.

“It’s called a suicide mission for a reason,” I shrug. “I figure, if we fail, or if we win but don’t come back, the Reapers are still out there. The galaxy’s going to need a Shepard when they come.”

Buddy frowns, and spells out the word _parthenogenesis_. “That’s dumb.”

“You’re dumb.”

“ _No_ ,” she says. “I mean _that’s_ dumb. The whole Shepard thing. One woman isn’t a magic bullet for Reapers. They’re going to die because we fight together. There’s nothing special about being Shepard.”

“Isn’t there?” I stare wistfully at the fish tank.

“No,” Buddy repeats. “She did good things, but she wasn’t the center of the world. You don’t need to be her. No one does.” She marks 63 points thanks to the triple words score. “Oh, and if you go without me, I’ll kill you.”

I laugh, and another part of me gets lighter. “Okay, okay, point taken. Although you’re already killing me pretty handily.”

“It’s only 217 points. You can catch up.”

* * *

The Reaper slides into the abyss. So do I.

The scabs on the back of my head seem to be bursting open again, an explosion of light and color, or maybe that’s just regular old explosions. I try to find purchase, fingers clawing at anything to slow my descent-

A hand locks around mine.

I don’t know where her helmet has gone. Buddy looks at me with glare of concentration, biting her cheek so hard a dribble of blood leaks from the corner of her mouth. “Do not let go, Commander! That is an order.”

I breathe through the swelling in my head and slap my other hand over hers. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

And then we’re being pulled up. It hurts to scrape my armor against chunks of melting metal but still we go up—Miranda’s hauled Buddy up the legs, panting as we fall next to her.

“We need to move,” she tells us.

I try to stand. I don’t. Buddy’s voice comes soft near my ear. “I got her.”

She wraps me over her shoulders and lifts, and I hang limply, bleeding, as the Collector base crumbles around us. The others, I can hear them, calling where the Normandy has docked in a shredded out hallway.

A voice says calmly, “I gotcha. It’s alright.”

I chuckle feebly. “You forgot the part where I called you hot stuff.”

“Too bad you stopped. Would have been a good name.”

“Could be worse. ‘Sport’ could have stuck.”

There is the thunder of feet around us, a dozen people shooting, covering our escape. The light ahead. We’re making it out of here. We’re safer together.


End file.
